


hybrid signal

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, author also continues to insist that classic who has DEPTH GODAMMIT, author continues to insist that doctor who is a fairy tale, gratuitous references to city of death, the doctor's ongoing love letter to humanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21644476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: When is a monster not a monster?
Comments: 22
Kudos: 161





	hybrid signal

**Author's Note:**

> “A monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root 'monstrum', a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”  
> — Ocean Vuong, from “A Letter To My Mother That She Will Never Read”, published in The New Yorker 

When you look out into endless void, only a child, barely a whisper, the stars call out like cold breath and tell you a terrible secret.

You leave your name behind.

You run, and you never stop.

1.

“Grandfather,” she says, in the quiet dark, out of the noise and haze and the blathering chatter of human nonsense. Susan has poor taste in friends, and even worse taste in teachers. “Won’t you please be kinder?”

It’s in you to harrumph and walk away. To turn up your nose at humanity’s oddness, at its frailty, at its utterly beguiling strangeness. You are a failure. You are an exile. You ran as far as you could, and now you have run even further.

You have run off the map.

You have run off the map, and you have taken your family with you, and humanity has softened something in her eyes, smoothed the worry in her face. Gallifrey would have hardened her eyes and carved out her face until there was no warmth left, no kindness, nothing tender or good. It carved you up, after all. Sucked you dry, and when there was nothing left of you that it could take, it took everything else. You are an empty shell, run off the map, dried up inside.

But your name—not the one you ran from, but the one you chose—is still a promise.

Perhaps it’s time to live up to that promise again. Perhaps in time your eyes will soften and the worry will be smoothed from your face. Perhaps—if you let yourself be beguiled—

“Hmm,” you say, as if to consider, letting the sound sit low in your throat. But you tap your nose, once, and she smiles, all teeth.

2.

“I dinnae think this is working, Doctor.”

Your legs are so short, this time around, that they dangle from the library sofa. The urge to kick them absently is so strong that you oblige yourself.

“What about it isn’t working, Jamie?” you ask, watching one foot rise after the other through the air, effortless, pointless. “I think you’re doing a fine job.”

“And I think you’re fighting a losing battle,” he says miserably, frowning down at the weathered book clenched in his white-knuckled hands. “You’ve got better things to do, surely, than teach a grown man his letters. We’ll be here for years, at this pace.”

“Like I said, you’re doing a fine job,” you say, leaning in, peering over his arm into the depths of the book. Something old and simple and human. Earth words, plain and easy. Nothing like the Time Tot’s First Book of First Derivatives that you’d cut your teeth on as a child, but human brains don’t work quite the same. It’s taken you quite a few decades to understand, but now—well, now you do. Or at least, perhaps you’re starting to. “There’s no shame in wanting to learn something new. Particularly when one hasn’t had the opportunity before.”

His frown deepens, so you soften your tone.

“I’m your friend. There’s no shame.” And you smile, so easily these days, because the universe is so full of delight and wonder in the smallest corners that you can’t believe you never noticed before. Jamie smiles too, tentative. “And besides,” you say, the smell of old books filling your nose, wonder sitting near behind your eyes. “Perhaps I’m learning something, too.”

3.

Liz finds you, because Liz always finds you. Hunkered down at the base of the console, where it’s being lodged in a drafty warehouse, wires exposed and obscene and ripped from where they should be, naked and vulnerable and so terribly, terribly alone—

“You’ve made quite a mess in here,” Liz says, managing somehow to sound both disapproving and sympathetic in the same breath. She hands you a steaming mug of tea and bends gracefully to fold herself down beside you. “And you yelled at poor Sergeant Benton. He was only trying to help, you know.”

“If I hadn’t yelled at him, the Brigadier would have gotten around to it eventually,” you mutter. The tea in your hands is warm, and it’s made exactly the way you like it, the way you only ever get it when you haven’t asked for it. Liz, as she’s quick to remind anyone who dares to ask, is a scientist, and not a secretary. “Besides. He was in the way.”

“No, he wasn’t.” Liz sips at her own tea. She doesn’t look at you.

“No,” you admit, finally. “He wasn’t.”

Satisfied, Liz sits with you for a while in comfortable silence, under the harsh flickering glare of the warehouse lights, the wind whistling in from the outside. Bitterly cold, if the gooseflesh on Liz’s arms is any indication, but you don’t feel it. You don’t feel it because you aren’t human. You don’t feel it because you don’t belong here. You don’t feel it because you are in exile.

“Is it so terrible here?” Liz asks, eventually. Carefully. She doesn’t look at you, long lashes hiding her eyes, the console throwing her stark features into sharp relief and shadow. “Really?”

Some days you wake up and find it’s not so terrible at all. Some days you wake up and find yourself trapped on the head of a pin. Some days you wake up and find yourself outside of your own skin, itching to be free, itching to belong.

Some days, you don’t wake up at all. In your dreams, everything you love you can still touch.

You could smile gently and lie. Instead, you let your eyes burn black and stay hunched and silent. Liz doesn’t pry. Eventually, she fetches your velvet cloak and wraps it around herself like a blanket, her only concession to the cold. She falls asleep under the console, pressed close to you, but not too close. Dignified, even in sleep.

She snores terribly, but you won’t tell her.

4.

“Do I have the right?” you whisper. You can feel the cold breath of stars on your neck. You are not an exile. You are a wanderer, you walk in eternity, you have _power_ the likes of which some can only dream of—

And your name is a promise.

The wires don’t touch.

4.5

After all that business with the paintings is over with, and you’ve waved goodbye to Duggan, you take in one last café. The plastic checkered table covering catches the last bit of Paris sunlight, glinting. It catches in Romana’s hair, too, delicate and burnished gold.

“I’m still not sure I understand the appeal,” she tells you, over her glass of table wine.

“Of what,” you frown. The table wine is terrible, of course. You take a sip and let it spill back out of your mouth into your glass, regretfully. “Paris? We’ve spoken about this, it’s about the _bouquet_.”

She frowns across at you.

“Paris is alright, I suppose. I’m speaking about _art_.”

“ _Alright, you suppose_ ,” you bluster, “now, really, Romana—”

“If a computer had painted the Mona Lisa, like they do at home, I’m quite sure we’d have had less than half the trouble we did.”

“If a computer had painted the Mona Lisa!” You nearly stand, out of offense. You refrain, out of—well, exhaustion, really. There’s been rather a lot of running around, lately. You forget and take a sip of your table wine, only to spit it back into the glass, again. “If a computer had painted the Mona Lisa, then it wouldn’t be the Mona Lisa. It would be—well, it would be—”

You slump back in your chair, eyebrows raising. Words sometimes have trouble escaping the trap of your own mouth, in this body.

“Well, you have to admit, Leonardo did a very fine job of it,” you mumble eventually.

“Oh, I suppose. Though I would have drawn in the eyebrows a bit more clearly.”

“Art isn’t about what _is_ ,” you protest. “It’s about what _seems_.”

She wrinkles her nose, though it might be the table wine’s fault. “I don’t understand,” she admits, and beneath the air of haughtiness there’s a whisper of longing.

 _You will_ , you don’t say. _I did, eventually_.

“This wine is terrible,” you say instead. You stand, and nearly trip on your scarf. “Come on, let’s go.”

She smiles, relieved, and takes your arm. “Where are we going?” she asks, as you abandon your seats, your drinks, your last café. You walk together, into the sun, hand in hand. Perpetual outsiders, wandering a city of death and art and wonderful, terrible nonsense. How very far you’ve fallen, from that marmalade sky.

How very far you have still to fall.

You grin a terrible, wonderful grin.

“I don’t know. Shall we find out?”

5.

She barrels into the TARDIS, impractical shoes clicking angrily, a rampage in the making, but she holds her tongue long enough to get you alone in the console room. Stark white and empty, with just the two of you. You linger by the hatstand. You could walk away, but she’d only follow. You could try to hide, but she’d only get lost trying to find you.

“You frightened me,” she says, after Turlough has slunk away, after Nyssa has gently excused herself, knowing better than to stay within firing distance. “You frightened me, you great bastard, you’re not meant to—”

“I’m sorry, Tegan,” you say, haltingly, but she’s not looking at you anymore, she’s breathing deeply through her nose, stalking closer to stick a finger into your coat, lips trembling.

“You’re not meant to frighten me,” she breathes, “you’re wearing a stick of celery on your coat, you don’t—you don’t—”

Her deep breaths have thinned. There’s a whistle at the back of her throat that might become a sob, and you realize, alarmed, that you’re not entirely sure what you’re meant to do here.

“Would you stop that?” she begs, loud and gasping, because nothing Tegan does is ever quiet. “Would you stop—stop looking at me like I just kicked your dog, when you—”

She shakes her head, wordless, finger still stalled near your coat lapel. She grasps it with a shaking hand and buries her head in your chest.

“You could have saved them,” she says into your coat, tears seeping into the fabric. You grasp the back of her head, fumbling, and she sinks in. It’s not quite an embrace.

“No,” you say, quietly. Nyssa had understood. Turlough, too, for different reasons. Worse reasons, perhaps, but you’re not ready to think about that, yet. Not today. “No, I couldn’t have. Not every day.”

“Then what’s the point?” she demands, fingers tightening in the fabric of your coat, face still hidden in your chest. “What’s the point of it all, because I—every day, Doctor, I get a little bit more scared.”

“Of me?” you ask, regret and guilt mingling in the pit of your stomach. “Tegan, you mustn’t—well, I—”

Your mouth is dry.

“The right thing,” you try, “is not always the easy thing. I think that maybe that’s the point. That’s where we come in.”

Silence.

“But I’ll keep trying to take you home, if that’s what you want,” you say, aiming for ‘light’, aiming for ‘reassuring’. But your voice sounds too young, and your eyes are too old. “One of these days, I’m bound to get it right.”

At that, she lifts her head, cheeks blotchy, twisted in a miserable scowl. Relieved and afraid. “Well, I’m here,” she says. “Aren’t I?” And buries her face right back in your chest, clinging.

You pat her awkwardly on the back of the head, the way you’ve seen Nyssa sometimes do. Far off in the kitchen, the kettle is boiling. In the depths of the TARDIS, Turlough is probably off somewhere plotting half-heartedly how best to kill you next. Business as usual. Or at least, soon it will be.

The guilt will stay. A stone in your gut.

The right thing. How are you to know? What gives you the right?

“Brave heart,” you whisper, into Tegan’s hair. “Brave heart.”

6.

“Perpugilliam Brown!” you bellow into the night. “Get back here right now!”

You’re no longer afraid of being frightening.

“No!” she hollers back, match to match, hackles raised to meet your own. “No way!”

“This jungle is full of flesh-eating crocodiles that only come out at night!”

“ _Oh_ ,” she shouts, obscured by shadows and foliage and shapes and blurs, sudden terror masked in belligerence, “you take me to all the nicest places, don’t you!”

“Get back here!”

“No!”

You could charge into the foliage after her, into the dark and the sharp, but if both of you get eaten by flesh-eating crocodiles, in the morning there will be no one to broker the first Pelucian Peace Treaty in three decades.

“You’re being ridiculous!” you yell into the trees instead.

“You’re being ridiculous!” she bellows back, but you can hear scraping and tearing as she stumbles her way back to you. The crunch of branches underfoot. “If you hadn’t chased me all the way out here—”

“If you hadn’t _ran away in the first place_ —”

“I wasn’t running away,” she blusters, and her face is finally close enough to see, scraped along a pale cheek, eyes wet and weary, “I was— _walking_ away.”

She’s finally within reaching distance, on the edge of the jungle. You could grab her arm and pull her in, but that’s what’s gotten you into this mess in the first place. You keep your hands by your sides.

“To sulk,” you say.

“To _think_ ,” she spits. “You might have mentioned the flesh-eating crocodiles.”

“I thought they were self-apparent.”

“Yeah, well, they _weren’t_.”

Sudden, scathing silence, between the two of you. There’s quite a lot you could say to fill it. Instead, you shake off your jacket and hand it to her, a peace offering in the damp chill of night.

She scoffs, tiredly. “I’d rather freeze to death than put on that monstrosity.”

“Peri,” you say, gently, and she bursts into tears. There’s a stone in your gut. You can’t fix this. You hold out your jacket, a steady offer.

“I wish you wouldn’t yell,” she chokes out.

“I’m not yelling.”

“You’re always yelling,” she says, miserable. “And so am I.” She swallows. “I miss him. The old you. He never yelled at me, he—”

“He died for you,” you say, still holding out your jacket. “He died for you, and so would I.”

Peri doesn’t cling. Peri finds no comfort in you. Perhaps because you have no comfort to offer. You are loud and brash and the right thing is not the easy thing and you will always do it. You will not be too soft to do it. You will not be too nice to do it. Your name is a promise.

You died where you stood, and you would do it again.

“I’m different,” you say, quiet with an effort. “I’m different all the time, but I’m the same. I’m two things, and so are you. Don’t you change, Peri? Don’t you grow? Don’t you learn?”

Peri doesn’t cling. Her eyes stay wet with tears, but she doesn’t cling.

“I hope I do,” she says quietly. Haltingly. You’ve both found fumbling silence in the same breath. “I think—I think that’s what being human’s about, mostly.” A pause, and fear in her eyes again, like she’s said something offensive. “I didn’t mean—”

“Exactly,” you say. You step forward, and she doesn’t move away. “Don’t you see?”

Her face is perfectly still, but she hasn’t moved away from you. “I still wish you were nicer,” she whispers.

“So do I,” you admit. “But it’s not about acting nice. It’s about being kind.”

Your arm is growing tired.

Peri frowns, and takes your coat.

7.

“Who taught you to play chess, Professor?” Ace sacrifices a pawn, carelessly. She’s young. It’s an understandable mistake.

“Death,” you say. You move your rook up three squares and wait. Ace frowns, at your move, at your answer.

“So, a dirty rotten cheat, then,” she says, with the surety of youth. Another pawn, set forth to die. No thought. No consideration. You reap it and mourn it. One day, she’ll learn.

“No,” you say. “The fairest player of them all.”

She slumps forward, chin resting on her hands, brows drawing together moodily. Her white bishop inches forward, propelled by a reluctant finger. “I’m going to lose, aren’t I.”

You move a knight this time, black and shiny. Limited in movement and vision, but the right set-up, the right preceding move, the right hand—

You reap another pawn, instead. Reach across and tweak her nose, smiling.

“Only if I decide to win,” you say.

8.

“Half-human,” you say, smiling, no longer sure if it’s a lie. Half a truth, maybe. “On my mother’s side.”

You'll forget. You'll keep forgetting, over and over and over, but your friends will be there to remind you of what matters. The promise you made, the name you chose—

Some things stay.

You're different but the same, with every exhilarating breath. 

8.5

You leave your name behind. The one you chose, this time. Cold breath is on your neck. The stars would whisper, but they’ve been broken apart and sold into nightmares.

You leave your name behind, and you would run, if you could.

There’s nowhere left to fall.

9.

You’ve forgotten everything. Sunlight in Paris and the smell of hot tea and the sheer nonsense of humanity. Everything’s been burned away, and it’s worse than exile, worse than death. You only have yourself to run from, now. You are an empty shell, run off the map, dried up inside.

You have everything to learn, again. It starts like this:

Her hand is warm in your own.

“Run,” you say.

10.

She is everything you’ve learned to be and more.

“No,” she begs you, afraid and relieved, and her tears are cold against your fingers on her cheek, “no, please, I’m better like this, I’m _better_ —”

When it’s done, you hold her for a very long time. No one bothers you. Red hair under your chin, metal grate beneath you, her sleeping body cradled close. For one shining, brilliant moment, she’d been a miracle. A hybrid. For just a moment, you’d wondered—

But it doesn’t matter. There’s no one left to care about prophecies, not anymore.

“I was better, too,” you whisper into her hair. “With you.”

~~ 10. ~~

You have the right, because there is no one left to stop you.

11.

“Why Earth?” She’s sprawled across the bench seat, painted nails clenched around a tennis ball that she keeps tossing into the air and occasionally throwing in your direction. “Why not—I dunno, Venus. Planet Zog. What’s so special about people?” You can almost hear her frown. “Earth people, I mean. _You know_.”

You pop up from underneath the console, squishing your goggles up your forehead in disbelief. “Planet Zog?” you protest.

“Earth!” She throws the tennis ball right at your face. You dodge and wince as it crashes into something probably important behind you. “You like it here. How come?”

“Well, why not?” you counter. “You lot invented cricket and fish fingers and funny cat videos.”

She pins you with a look.

“Because you’re a bit of everything,” you say, surprising her with the truth. You’ve remembered, over the years. You’ve learned again what you once forgot. “Good and bad. You make art that looks funny and call it something serious. When things go horribly wrong, you make terrible jokes, and then you make tea. I don’t know. Does there need to be a reason?”

“No, I just,” and there’s a wistful look to her, like there has been lately, ever since the crack, ever since Rory ceased to exist, “wonder about the point of it all, sometimes. The point of you, the point of—this. I get—”

Her nose wrinkles.

“Amelia Pond,” you say. “Are you afraid?”

“ _No_ ,” she protests, straightening. She stills. “Why? Are you?”

You tap a finger to the side of your nose, smiling.

11.5

“What was the promise?” she whispers in your ear, breath hot on your cheek, hair tickling your face.

“Never cruel,” you breathe. “Never cowardly.”

12.

“Professor,” Bill says, frowning down at the chess board. “I don’t think I wanna know how to play this.”

“Okay,” you say.

You put the board away.

~~ 12. ~~

She learns anyway, because sometimes you don’t.

13.

Later, in the dark, she comes to you.

“You can say I told you so,” she whispers.

“I will never,” you say.

“What’s the point?” she asks, but it sounds more like pleading. So close to tears, when you’d do anything for laughter. “What’s the point, when—”

She trails off. Prem’s watch glints in her hand.

The point is the promise.

“The right thing isn’t always the easy thing,” you say quietly, but you’re smiling gently, old enough now to be a comfort, a reassurance. Your eyes are still older than your face, and you don’t always learn, but you do always try. “It’s not always the nice thing. That’s where we come in, I think. Is that alright?”

She still looks at you like you hung the moon, and you wish she wouldn’t, and you wish she’d never stop. A tiny bit afraid of you. A tiny bit in love with you.

It goes both ways, is the thing. It always has, right from the very beginning.

You have so very far to fall.

She smiles at you, reassured.

“Yeah,” she says. “Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> I missed Doctor Who Day by about a mile, but originally this was intended to go out to celebrate rip. Anyway, this is a weird rambley love letter to a weird little show, all 50+ years of it, and unfortunately I was gripped by the urge to write in second person. Looking back at it, I can't quite tell whether it's comforting or slightly alarming, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. <3 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and I'd love to know what you thought!


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